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BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir turned 77 on Friday, with birthday greetings from family members at Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj.
Fakhrul’s wife, Rahat Ara Begum, along with his younger daughter Mirza Safaruh and sister Najma Kalam, met him at the central jail at noon and greeted him with a happy birthday there, said BNP media cell member Sayrul Kabir Khan.
He said the family members took Mirza Fakhrul’s favourite food and a cake to the jail on his birthday. They spent around 45 minutes with the BNP leader in jail.
Contacted, Rahat Ara said they became upset after meeting Fakhrul as his health condition is not good.
“He lost five kg of weight, as he is sick. So I feel sad to see him in such poor health condition,” she said.
Fakhrul’s wife urged the country’s people to pray for her ailing husband.
Fakhul has been staying in jail since he was arrested on October 29, a day after violent clashes between the police and BNP leaders and activists centring on the party’s grand rally in the capital’s Nayapaltan area.
Fakhrul was born on January 26 in 1948 in Thakurgaon. His father, the late Mirza Ruhul Amin, was a Muslim League leader and a minister of the Pakistan government.
Fakhrul, who was involved with left politics during his student life, completed his graduation and post-graduation from Dhaka University’s economics department.
Later, he took up teaching as his profession through the BCS examination. Fakhrul quit teaching during the 1980s and joined politics formally.
He was elected MP from Thakurgaon-1 with the BNP’s ticket in 2001 and then made a state minister. He was also elected MP from the Bogura-6 seat in the 11th parliamentary election. But he did not take an oath yet as the BNP rejected the election results.
Fakhrul was made acting secretary general of the BNP after the death of the party’s then-secretary general, Khandaker Delwar Hossain, in 2011. He was given full charge of the party’s secretary general position five years later, in 2016.